


Finding You Again

by Jeiidaan



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gay Yearning Initiates, Leo remembers his previous lives, M/M, Reincarnation, Shiro reincarnates into an italian boy named Leo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24276349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeiidaan/pseuds/Jeiidaan
Summary: And in every life, I will find you, and I will choose you. Always until the end of time.
Relationships: Fujimoto Shirou/Mephisto Pheles
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	Finding You Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rynoa29](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynoa29/gifts).



> This was written almost entirely for self indulgence with the rest being for my best friend. It started off as a loose concept and maybe probably stayed that way? But I really enjoyed writing it and so I hope you enjoy reading it.
> 
> Edit: Rynoa wrote a prequel! Check it out: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400612

Little Leonardo was a strange boy growing up in the lush city of Rome. 

As a child, he rarely cried and his parents wondered if he would have difficulties concentrating or learning. The baby would often look off into the distance, looking at nothing for hours at a time if he was allowed without distraction. If his attention was caught, he’d babble and flail as a normal infant should. 

He was quick to push past certain physical obstacles— walking earlier than average, picking things up, feeding himself— but mental puzzles were a bit different. Leo still struggled to understand simple puzzles by age two, such as trying to fit shapes together that simply didn’t match. Doctors did check ups on him and his worried parents fussed over him, sending him to special classes as a toddler for early learning like the privileged and loved child he was. Despite all of that, he didn’t speak until he was four years old.

“What time is it?” Leo asked his astonished preschool teacher with a surprising amount of diction.

“It’s… just about lunch time,” she replied, too stunned to do anything but answer the question. Leo beamed and returned to silence as he walked back to his coloring book and scribbled over the page, holding two crayons in his fist and paying no attention to the lines that attempted to guide him. When his parents had come in response to her hushed phone call in the hallway, Leo didn’t speak to them, leaving her to believe that she’d imagined the encounter. 

Leo continued to be silent until he was six. His parents had spoken to his teachers in school and they’d expressed how worried they were about his development and he’d need to start taking extra classes or even be held back a year before he began school in earnest. It was that night while they were discussing it over dinner, that Leo opened his mouth. He spoke and he spoke and he spoke, talking all about what he’d done that day, the way his favorite toys looked, what his favorite color was, how blue the sky looked. He spoke as if he’d had so much to say and only now thought to say it. His mother hugged him, sobbing in relief as he stuffed his fingers into his mouth, his voice slightly hoarse from sudden over use. 

It was as if a spell had been broken and Leo was suddenly developing as a normal child. He still had his quirks, of course, as every youth did. Leo’s fascination lied in pocket watches. 

The ticking of the clock against his ear brought him a comfort he just couldn’t explain. Long memories of places he’d never seen, faces he didn’t know, voices he’d never heard, rushed in his mind constantly in a strange cacophony of noise, but the steady  _ tick, tock, tick, tock _ of a pocket watch brought order to the clamor in his mind. He’d tried to explain it once to his mother when he was ten, but she’d only given him a strange look and his father told him to stop speaking nonsense. 

But it wasn’t nonsense. It was important. He could feel it. Every time Leo laid his head down at night, he would hold his chosen pocket watch close under his cheek, feeling the ticking against his very skin, and think and it just all felt so important, like a base yearning of his soul that he couldn’t fathom yet.

It was when he was fourteen that he decided he didn’t like girls. Just beginning to discover his body, Leo often woke up from dreams that left him confused and wanting, but none of them involved women. They were all a face he couldn’t recognize but a face he loved. He couldn’t explain how much he loved the person in his dreams. The feeling rushed through his veins but the tighter he tried to grasp it, the more fuzzy it became, and then the dream would slip away into a vague desire. All Leo knew was that girls were not on his mind. He pressed a pocket watch to his ear.

He was sixteen when he saw him. His parents were chatting in the living room, talking over a foreign press conference that was being translated by a local news station. Leo walked in, listening with barely any interest as he fiddled with the latch on the watch in his hand. His face was barely on screen for more than a few seconds but it was  _ him. _ Leo’s fingers froze as he stared at the screen, the news channel transitioning to the anchors that laughed at what the press conference discussed. He felt a clenching in his heart, like he’d been offered merely a taste of something he’d been chasing after and, yet, didn’t know it. Then, one of the anchors said his name. It was with a slight undertone of scorn, but it was a name.

_ Johann Faust. _

What a strangely lovely sounding name.

Leo hurried back to his room, pulling out his smartphone and tapping the name into the search engine on the built in browser. The pocket watch felt heavier in his hand and the ticking seemed deafening as he searched by image. 

The man was hardly what you would call conventionally attractive and, yet, Leo felt enraptured by him. His sharp features and straight teeth—they shouldn’t be straight, his mind supplied—were distinct and Leo found himself saving a few pictures from the internet to his phone. He began to research the man. The more he searched, the more he found that real information on the man was difficult to find. It was frustratingly vague beyond the fact that he was the Chairman in some school in Japan.

What a name for someone who worked in Japan. 

Leo touched the screen of his phone softly, dragging his nails over the shape of the man’s face. 

He dreamt of him that night. He dreamt of wide smiles, pointed teeth, a swaying tail with the cadence of a pleased cat. It was frustrating to wake up when the visions would leave his memories almost immediately. Leo just wanted to sleep. He buried his face in his pillow, willing for sleep to take him again, yearning to see his face in the way it should be. His mother asked him if he was lovestruck. He was.

He was seventeen when he was mugged. Though, he supposed “mugging” wasn’t quite the right word for it. Leo threw his money at the man with the knife but the look in his eyes didn’t abate. He lunged forward, grabbing him by the throat and feeling pinpricks of searing pain split the skin of his neck. His world swam in front of him. Leo blinked as his vision blurred and adjusted, and, as if scales fell from his eyes, he was able to see the monster that was poised to kill him. 

Leo screamed, shocking even himself, as he stared up at the skin that was pulled taut over a malformed skeleton with teeth and spikes jutting out, piercing what could only be a face, and yet looked nothing like it. The mouth was opening.

His arm moved on its own. Leo grabbed at the thing’s chest as his knees tucked against his stomach and his feet turned up. With a strength he never knew he possessed, he flipped it over his head, sending it toppling over to the pavement. Leo scrambled up to his feet and, instead of running, turned to face the rising thing. He braced his front foot and surged his weight forward, swinging his back foot as he twisted his body for every inch of momentum and force he could plow behind the heel of his shoe. He heard a crack as soon as his foot collided, sending the thing’s head into the wall. 

Fear clutched at him again as it pulled itself free with a sucking squelch of tar like liquid that dripped from its skull. Leo dug his hand into his coat and his fingers were met with nothing at his belt. He looked down. Why had he done that? The moment of confusion was all it needed and superior strength shoved him down onto the ground again. The liquid dripped on his face, singing his dark hair and burning the skin it touched. 

Holy water, silver, rock salt. He had no supplies, no weapons, and no back up. What could he do? The miasma was burning at his skin and he had no way to cure it. Getting up before the demon clamped down on his face was—

Leo never heard a gunshot before and yet he didn’t jump when it echoed in the tight confines of the alley. The thing was blown back, leaving Leo wheezing for air. Boots pounded the pavement past him but one pair stopped. A woman clad in a dark coat looked at him with kind, reassuring eyes.

“It’ll be okay,” the exorcist said gently to him as the demon was eviscerated just a couple feet away.

(His brain remembered everything, but his body needed to catch up. He still needed to learn the languages, but it came deceptively easy to him. He needed to work up his muscle memory to match the series of images that flashed through his brain. He needed to touch his skin, to properly place a sensation to the phantom feeling beneath his fingertips.)

Leo fought and he fought and he fought until he was eighteen and they could no longer hold him back. Instead of college, Leo joined the exorcist school in the Italian branch. It was the most illustrious branch, he was told. He was lucky to be accepted into the school that was housed within the Vatican itself. This was the best opportunity for his budding career.

What Leo wouldn’t give to be transferred to the Tokyo branch.

They gave him standard keys to use while he was at school, keys that would open doorways. Most students kept them on a key ring. Leo felt the weight in his pocket almost as comforting as the ticking of the clock in his hand.

As soon as he had entered, Leo had done more research on the name he now remembered almost as if it was his own. 

(It was. It was his own. It was strange but somehow he knew.)

Shiro Fujimoto, a former Paladin that worked from the Tokyo branch and suddenly it all made sense. He dove into the man’s history and the reason why he wanted a Dragoon meister just  _ made sense. _ He always felt this feeling on his hips, like a weight that was meant to be there, but never noticed it until guns were placed in the holster.

(He never had the affinity for a natural familiar. He knew this before going to the class that he wouldn’t get one. He fiddled with his pocket watch instead.)

Leo remembered the login info, letting his fingers tap the keys automatically. He was lucky that a nineteen year old account wasn’t deactivated. Maybe the Order just didn’t care that much for clean up when it came to email accounts. It was barely used in its time. He could see names that felt familiar. Yunokawa, Tsubaki— Wait. 

Mephisto Pheles.

He clicked open the email.

_ Click on the paperclip to open the attachment. You’ll find the schedule you requested. _

_ Do come by tonight, Shiro. I’ll have dinner waiting after your meeting~♥ _

Leo’s nails touched the laptop screen.

He was nineteen when he saw him for the first time. In person. He supposed that the second best place to be besides the Tokyo branch would be the one that resided within the Vatican itself. Leo saw several foreign exorcists pass by when he was on patrol, coming through doors with no hallways attached. He walked past one just as it opened and the voice he heard was like a balm to a bone deep ache. 

“I assure you, nothing has fallen to pieces.” Leo understood the Japanese perfectly though he had only studied it for close to a year. He turned his head, watching his thin frame walk away as he spoke to the exorcist beside him. His white suit was like a beacon amongst black coats and Leo found himself struck silent. 

He wished he could have spoken.

What could he have said? God, he didn’t know, but nonsense would have been better than the slack jawed staring he had done. 

He rushed through the rest of his classes, determined to pass the exam on the first try. Leo had just turned twenty when it happened. The weight of the sword on his shoulder was nothing compared to the weight of the pen when he scribbled out a transfer request to Tokyo. It was met with confusion, but they had no reason to deny him. The Tokyo branch was always woefully understaffed in comparison. The fact that someone wanted to  _ leave _ the Vatican was a blessing in its own. 

In the plane, he felt his heart beating a wild rhythm. Leo pressed the watch to his ear, letting the ticking calm his nerves but, even then, it wasn’t enough. This was it. It was almost ten hours of torture before he hauled his luggage onto the True Cross campus. He was led by a guide to the apartment where he’d be staying. Leo was respectful to them, doing his best to stuff down the base desire to run down familiar streets—down an alley, turn right, sprinting down seven blocks wouldn’t take long with his speed, turn left, over the bridge, he’d see the house from there—and listened to the man’s introduction.

Leo was given a map. He didn’t need it.

It took ages for his guide to leave. He waited a single minute, as long as he dared, before he pulled the door open and ran as quick as his feet could carry him. 

He let his dreams guide him. He had run these streets before. He knew them. A pothole was covered but that crack in the sidewalk had grown. He jumped over it and was careful to avoid the bumpy root from the overgrown tree that tried to rise to meet his feet. Leo panted, his heart heaving and aching and yearning and  _ longing _ and the mansion that peeked over the buildings in his view was like an oasis in a desert he’d been wandering in for his whole life. 

The gates opened easily to his touch as Leo ran up the drive, paying no mind to the strange looks he’d received. He knocked on the door, his lungs gasping in desperately needed air as he sweated under the heavy coat on his shoulders. What would he do when he saw him? He couldn’t fall silent again. He refused to. For the last year, he’d regretted that moment in the Vatican. He regretted that he didn’t call out, say his name, something—

“Good afternoon,” a familiar voice spoke as the door opened. “How may I help you?”

Leo saw him and he knew immediately who it was. A rush of warm affection pushed him to lunge forward.

“Belial!” he laughed, taking the stunned butler into a tight hug. “I’m back!”

Back? He’d never been here before.

(Yes, he had.)

“Ah…” Belial got through his shock as he fell into his butler stance once more. He patted Leo’s back. “Welcome, sir. The master is in his office, shall I?”

Leo leaned away from the butler and looked into the hallway, up the lavish set of steps. The building itself was a mystery to him. 

(It always had been.)

“I’ll find him,” he whispered as he rushed in. Leo hurried to the nearest door. The knob felt warm under his palm. It was like the house itself funneled him in to go exactly where he needed. He opened the door to a familiar room.

High ceilings and lavish furniture dotted the room with a desk that stood in front of huge windows. 

And he sat there, looking at him, as if he knew he was coming.

He was twenty when he first made eye contact with him, when he crossed the room in long desperate strides, when he found that walking around the desk was much too inefficient and climbing over was all he could bear to do.

Leo was twenty when he grabbed Mephisto’s face and kissed him like a man starved and tightening fingers around his waist pulled him in, just as they’d always done.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And what do you call this?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400612) by [rynoa29](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynoa29/pseuds/rynoa29)




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